Tom Cruise Knows You're Not Happy He's Starring in 'One Shot'

Not-so-tall Tom Cruise playing the six-foot-five Jack Reacher in 'One Shot' hasn't gone over well with fans of the Lee Child novel. The outcry over the casting is reminiscent of when he got flak for signing on to play a blond, androgynous bloodsucker in 1994's 'Interview With The Vampire.' Cruise tells Empire that he's aware of the brouhaha. " I'm very sensitive to it," he explained. "This is Lee's book and Lee's character. Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn't then I wouldn't have done it."

Child says he's "thrilled" about having Cruise embody his ex-military cop. As he told the BBC, "People think we should have had an actor that looks more like Reacher is described in the books. First of all there aren't any such actors, so it's much more a question of which actor has the talent and screen presence to create what Reacher does on the screen, and that really comes down to finding the actor with the most talent."

Cruise raved about the character to Empire: "He doesn't have a cell phone, he doesn't have email. He's off the grid. He pays for things in cash. People look at things through the prism of the colors of their life, but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes. In that sense he's sort of a Dirty Harry, a James Bond, a Josey Wales."

As for that 'Vampire' flap, author Anne Rice was so upset about having the star of 'Top Gun' as her centuries-old bloodsucker, she stated that "Cruise is no more my Vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler." She eventually recanted and took out ads praising his performance in the movie.

'One Shot' is currently filming in Pittsburgh with Christopher McQuarrie ('The Way of the Gun') directing.